Use what? CVS? No, because it doesn't meet my needs. So use what? Nothing at all? Something that doesn't work?
I trust you have evaluated cvs and have found it to "not meet your needs" and "not work at all"? Or maybe you are just buying completely into Larry's anti-CVS propaganda. Hint: mozilla, a project much larger than the Linux kernel and with more developers, uses CVS.
No you don't. You pay for it with the considerable hassle and expense of being forced to upgrade your basic infrastructure software whenever some company tells you to.
If you download Linux, that's free in every sense of the word. Bitkeeper is not free. Not even free as in beer.
and am thus legally and legitimately prepared to defend myself when a burglar comes through the window at 2 AM.
...and you have regular wet dreams about this prospect, don't you? Nothing wrong with that of course, just make sure that your kids don't shoot themselves in a bout of puberty depression.
In a civil case, you're right. If it's a criminal case however (like denying the Holocaust, a crime in Germany), the Germans can have you arrested as soon as you enter a country that Germany has an extradition treaty with.
We need the profit motive to keep the gears turning, those gears crank out the new stuff. It's great that free software gives us free versions of existing products, but who is going to pay for the next generation of new products?
Almost every good feature in computer operating systems today, including most features in DOS, Windows, and Windows/NT, came from the mind of one hacker or another. Typically, the work was not commissioned by a company.
I can't believe it. Here Alan makes an excellent cogent case for activism against corporate sponsored laws that take away our rights, and all you have to say is: "is it that important?", "don't you want to take a walk instead?"
You just said precisely what the corporations want you to say. "It's not that important. Don't worry. It's just code and copyrights, who really cares? Why don't you take a nice walk? We will take care of it for you."
If for example you mean "disregard parental doctrines, and work it out on their own" then that is obviously going to be scewed and not regard all those people that did neutraly compare and came up with the same conclusions as their parents.
I want to count those people of course. What I'm saying is: take all people who made a sincere effort to neutrally compare all religions (including their parents'), temporarily disregarding their own beliefs and upbringing, hard as it may be. Among those, I claim, the large majority ends up nonbelievers, a small percentage picks some religion other than their parents', and a small percentage picks the same religion as their parents.
But I see the problem with my definition: those who have been conditioned well are such strong believers that they could never muster the energy for such a comparison, nor could they see the need.
"Anyone who thinks like me is smart"
More properly: "Anyone who doesn't think like me is stupid."
You addressed none of the major points in my previous post,
I went back to your post, and to me it contained three points (no parental indoctrination since teenagers rebel and can veto; religion must be good since people tend not to veto; "neutral comparison" needs to be defined). I answered the first two, here's my answer to the third: "Neutral comparison" of the world's religions is a comparison which disregards all one sided information given to you by your parents, school, church etc., since that would give your religion an unfair advantage. The religions have to be compared from an imaginary neutral external viewpoint, "God's viewpoint" if you want. Since I believe in the overwhelming force of early childhood indoctrination, such a neutral comparison is exceedingly difficult.
You've obviously never had one.
But I've been one. And all the rebellion in the world had not enough power to stop me from making my bed in the morning, the most irrational thing anybody ever invented. I do it just because it makes me feel better, based on early conditioning.
I do chores becuase I want a clean house, and trying to clean a house that's been untended for a month is a real bother.
That's a rationalization after the fact. Admit it: you don't like the sight of socks lying on the floor. A completely irrational dislike, and completely comparable to your like of God.
The mutually exclusiveness is a plot point, and probably not much of a concern for practicle people.
Does it matter to you what happens after death? Whether you will be reborn as a snake, reborn as a human, living forever in paradise (will God be there?), living forever in hell, be dead like a rock? Does it matter to you whether good actions are rewarded and bad actions are punished in the afterlife?
What matters to people is that the religion brings a healthier happier lifestyle, improves the world around them, and genuinely brings them closer to God.
It's obvious that religion makes people feel better, or else it wouldn't have survived for so long (just like picking up socks). The point is: if people were critical thinkers, they would have realized long ago that it is all a huge house of fairy tales *designed* to make you feel and behave better (succeeding in the former, spectacularly failing in the latter).
If indeed cellular automations are somehow at the heart of the universe around us, then the human effort to reduce the universe to understandable models and formulas and simulations is ultimately doomed to failure.
Right. And since the effort to reduce the universe to formulas has been breathtakingly successful beyond the wildest dreams, while the cellular automata approach (and related new-age "Santa-Fe-style" chaos and complexity theories) have yet to solve their first problem of any significance, we have to conclude that the book's central thesis is a huge bunch of baloney.
I've always been curious about such a belief, becuase it lays little stock on one of the driving forces of the universe --the rebelious nature of teenagers.
...which is a lot smaller than you might think. You like the food that your mom cooked for you, you brush your teethes every day because your mom told you so, you do the daily chores because your mom conditioned you to do so. Teenager rebellion is just a phase during puberty when teenagers are pissed off at the world and try to piss off the world. It is not nearly as strong as the base laid down much earlier.
the majority of people find no reason to disbelieve their parents doctrines. I think that says a lot about the viability of morals and religion.
It says a lot about the critical thinking skills of a vast majority of people, since most religions are mutually exclusive, and therefore most people, if they accept their parents' doctrines, are by necessity wrong.
I'm all for freely chosen ideologies, but how many people chose their religion freely? Most people believe because of their childhood indoctrination. Virtually everybody who attempts to neutrally compare the world's religions and pick the best one ends up a non-believer.
Local muslims are not your enemies. Your enemies are people who want to wipe you off the face of the earth. Do you love those?
I was pointing out the flaw in your argument: if "Love your enemies" were the criterium for true Christianity, then there would be virtually no Christians around, since virtually nobody follows this prescription.
Note that I didn't blame all MS employees, I was just trying to disprove the statement "MS employees are good people". This general statement is clearly false, because it is impossible that a group of good people collectively behave badly.
Now you could argue that most employees have nothing to do with the bad actions of MS and are basically good. I would dispute that. Many midlevel managers know about and carry out the anticompetitive practices, many programmers are involved in embracing and extending protocols to defeat competitors, many lawyers are involved in phrasing and enforcing EULA's, and all employees (and share holders!) profit from these immoral practices.
I know a number of folks who work at Microsoft. It's an awesome place to work, and MS employees are good people.
Oh really. You cannot divorce the people working for a company from the company itself. They are one and the same; a company is not some mythical entity. If the company is convicted of abusing its software monopole (upheld on appeal), if the company conducts software audits in schools, if the company authors outrageous EULA's that forbid you to use the software together with competitor's products and to even talk about the software, if the company steals other people's code, then all of this is done by the company's employees.
The American system is a constitutionally limited republic, restricted to the protectrion of individual rights. In such a system, majority rule is applicable only to lesser details, such as the selection of certain personnel. But the majority has no say over the basic principles governing the government. It has no power to ask for or gain the infringement of individual rights.
Only if you interpret "majority" as ">50%". A supermajority can easily remove the first amendment, or any other inconvenient liberty.
Oh, and your Socrates example lacks persuasive power: the US has repeatedly executed spies, even though they didn't initiate force nor violated anybody's rights. The majority simply decides that they don't like what spies do: they see it as a threat to their society, just like Sokrates' teachings were seen as a threat.
For that reason, I hope that it continues to enjoy commercial success and that any competitor that may someday supplant it is also a commercial software product.
You didn't mention the artificial inefficiencies introduced by EULA-protected software:
Restrictions on how and when software can be used.
Restrictions on what other products can be used in conjunction with the software.
Restrictions on what can be said about the software.
Requirement to keep proof of purchase for an indefinite amount of time, lest the company be subject to a disruptive audit.
These artificial inefficiencies reduce productivitiy and will therefore be swept aside by market forces. Reduced productivity
means lower living standards for everybody; if you read your Niemoeller quote right, and include all of society in your consideration, not just EULA-software writers, then you'll have to agree that the death of the EULA model is desirable.
Right now, it survives only because of companies that have been convicted of abusing their software monopoly.
But there is no question that the EULA-software model is fighting a losing battle. Nobody can argue that "that's what consumers want". Consumers want high quality software, minus the restrictions, and that's exactly what they are going to get.
The sickle cell gene allele is much more common among blacks than among whites; the cystic fibrosis gene allele is much more common among whites than among blacks.
This can be explained by genetics as follows: healthy carriers of the cystic fibrosis allele are protected from cholera, which historically was a problem in Europe but not in Africa; healthy carriers of the sickle cell allele are protected from malaria, which is a problem in Africa but not in Europe. Whites, with ancestry in Europe, therefore have a lot of cystic fibrosis; blacks, with ancestry in Africa, have a lot of sickle cell anemia.
As soon as malaria is removed from the face of the earth, you can expect that sickle cell anemia will slowly vanish as well (unless there is some other as yet unknown beneficial effect of the sickle cell allele).
You have to distinguish between DD, Dd and dd. If d stands for the recessive Cickle cell trait, then the dd people are sick, the DD and Dd people are healthy. The Dd people are carriers who can pass the trait on to their offspring. The Dd people are different from DD people in various small subtle ways. One of those is that they don't die as often from Malaria.
If Dd and DD were completely indistinguishable, then indeed evolutionary theory would predict that the d gene die out over time. Such complete indistinguishability however almost never happens. The case where Dd people differ from DD people is called "incomplete dominance".
evolution has to explain how recessive genes were created
Recessive traits which are harmful in a homozygote are almost always beneficial in a heterozygote. See for instance Cystic Fibrosis, the most important genetic disease among whites. It's a recessive trait. Heterozygotic carriers of that trait are protected from Cholera because they don't lose water as fast as others when they get diarrhea. Same for cickle sell anemia, the most important genetic disease among blacks. It's recessive, and heterozygotic carries are protected from malaria, because of the special shape of their red blood cells which the malaria parasite tries to attack.
And now you won't be surprised to learn that malaria is a big problem in the area where blacks originated, and cholera is a big problem in the area where whites originated.
What is the legal basis for these audits? I mean, can I just show up at your house and demand that you prove that your watch is in fact yours and that you didn't steal it from me, nor bought it from someone who stole it from me, nor bought it from someone who bought it from someome who stole it from me...?
I really like Bill's argument "In a GPL world, only the farmers will pay taxes, hacking at night". It conveniently forgets that Microsoft hasn't paid income taxes in years because of stock option loopholes, and that in any case, even if they did pay taxes, the net money flow would still go from the government to Microsoft and not the other way around.
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I trust you have evaluated cvs and have found it to "not meet your needs" and "not work at all"? Or maybe you are just buying completely into Larry's anti-CVS propaganda. Hint: mozilla, a project much larger than the Linux kernel and with more developers, uses CVS.
No you don't. You pay for it with the considerable hassle and expense of being forced to upgrade your basic infrastructure software whenever some company tells you to.
If you download Linux, that's free in every sense of the word. Bitkeeper is not free. Not even free as in beer.
In a civil case, you're right. If it's a criminal case however (like denying the Holocaust, a crime in Germany), the Germans can have you arrested as soon as you enter a country that Germany has an extradition treaty with.
We need the profit motive to keep the gears turning, those gears crank out the new stuff. It's great that free software gives us free versions of existing products, but who is going to pay for the next generation of new products?
Compare that to this paragraph from his 1993 Sourceware OS paper:
Almost every good feature in computer operating systems today, including most features in DOS, Windows, and Windows/NT, came from the mind of one hacker or another. Typically, the work was not commissioned by a company.
(Highlighted in the original).
Microsoft does not pay federal corporate income taxes, because of employee stock option schemes.
I can't believe it. Here Alan makes an excellent cogent case for activism against corporate sponsored laws that take away our rights, and all you have to say is: "is it that important?", "don't you want to take a walk instead?" You just said precisely what the corporations want you to say. "It's not that important. Don't worry. It's just code and copyrights, who really cares? Why don't you take a nice walk? We will take care of it for you."
I want to count those people of course. What I'm saying is: take all people who made a sincere effort to neutrally compare all religions (including their parents'), temporarily disregarding their own beliefs and upbringing, hard as it may be. Among those, I claim, the large majority ends up nonbelievers, a small percentage picks some religion other than their parents', and a small percentage picks the same religion as their parents.
But I see the problem with my definition: those who have been conditioned well are such strong believers that they could never muster the energy for such a comparison, nor could they see the need.
"Anyone who thinks like me is smart"
More properly: "Anyone who doesn't think like me is stupid."
I went back to your post, and to me it contained three points (no parental indoctrination since teenagers rebel and can veto; religion must be good since people tend not to veto; "neutral comparison" needs to be defined). I answered the first two, here's my answer to the third: "Neutral comparison" of the world's religions is a comparison which disregards all one sided information given to you by your parents, school, church etc., since that would give your religion an unfair advantage. The religions have to be compared from an imaginary neutral external viewpoint, "God's viewpoint" if you want. Since I believe in the overwhelming force of early childhood indoctrination, such a neutral comparison is exceedingly difficult.
You've obviously never had one.
But I've been one. And all the rebellion in the world had not enough power to stop me from making my bed in the morning, the most irrational thing anybody ever invented. I do it just because it makes me feel better, based on early conditioning.
I do chores becuase I want a clean house, and trying to clean a house that's been untended for a month is a real bother.
That's a rationalization after the fact. Admit it: you don't like the sight of socks lying on the floor. A completely irrational dislike, and completely comparable to your like of God.
The mutually exclusiveness is a plot point, and probably not much of a concern for practicle people.
Does it matter to you what happens after death? Whether you will be reborn as a snake, reborn as a human, living forever in paradise (will God be there?), living forever in hell, be dead like a rock? Does it matter to you whether good actions are rewarded and bad actions are punished in the afterlife?
What matters to people is that the religion brings a healthier happier lifestyle, improves the world around them, and genuinely brings them closer to God.
It's obvious that religion makes people feel better, or else it wouldn't have survived for so long (just like picking up socks). The point is: if people were critical thinkers, they would have realized long ago that it is all a huge house of fairy tales *designed* to make you feel and behave better (succeeding in the former, spectacularly failing in the latter).
Right. And since the effort to reduce the universe to formulas has been breathtakingly successful beyond the wildest dreams, while the cellular automata approach (and related new-age "Santa-Fe-style" chaos and complexity theories) have yet to solve their first problem of any significance, we have to conclude that the book's central thesis is a huge bunch of baloney.
the majority of people find no reason to disbelieve their parents doctrines. I think that says a lot about the viability of morals and religion.
It says a lot about the critical thinking skills of a vast majority of people, since most religions are mutually exclusive, and therefore most people, if they accept their parents' doctrines, are by necessity wrong.
Like they already said in the Bible: "Thou shalt not kill (except those who did something to deserve it)."
I'm all for freely chosen ideologies, but how many people chose their religion freely? Most people believe because of their childhood indoctrination. Virtually everybody who attempts to neutrally compare the world's religions and pick the best one ends up a non-believer.
Local muslims are not your enemies. Your enemies are people who want to wipe you off the face of the earth. Do you love those?
I was pointing out the flaw in your argument: if "Love your enemies" were the criterium for true Christianity, then there would be virtually no Christians around, since virtually nobody follows this prescription.
I trust that you, a good Christian no doubt, have already sent off a bouquet of flowers to your beloved enemies, the Al-queda?
Now you could argue that most employees have nothing to do with the bad actions of MS and are basically good. I would dispute that. Many midlevel managers know about and carry out the anticompetitive practices, many programmers are involved in embracing and extending protocols to defeat competitors, many lawyers are involved in phrasing and enforcing EULA's, and all employees (and share holders!) profit from these immoral practices.
Oh really. You cannot divorce the people working for a company from the company itself. They are one and the same; a company is not some mythical entity. If the company is convicted of abusing its software monopole (upheld on appeal), if the company conducts software audits in schools, if the company authors outrageous EULA's that forbid you to use the software together with competitor's products and to even talk about the software, if the company steals other people's code, then all of this is done by the company's employees.
Only if you interpret "majority" as ">50%". A supermajority can easily remove the first amendment, or any other inconvenient liberty.
Oh, and your Socrates example lacks persuasive power: the US has repeatedly executed spies, even though they didn't initiate force nor violated anybody's rights. The majority simply decides that they don't like what spies do: they see it as a threat to their society, just like Sokrates' teachings were seen as a threat.
I wouldn't be so sure that it is legal to recycle the Win2K license. It's most likely a license "for distribution with a new computer only".
For that reason, I hope that it continues to enjoy commercial success and that any competitor that may someday supplant it is also a commercial software product.
You didn't mention the artificial inefficiencies introduced by EULA-protected software:
These artificial inefficiencies reduce productivitiy and will therefore be swept aside by market forces. Reduced productivity means lower living standards for everybody; if you read your Niemoeller quote right, and include all of society in your consideration, not just EULA-software writers, then you'll have to agree that the death of the EULA model is desirable. Right now, it survives only because of companies that have been convicted of abusing their software monopoly. But there is no question that the EULA-software model is fighting a losing battle. Nobody can argue that "that's what consumers want". Consumers want high quality software, minus the restrictions, and that's exactly what they are going to get.
The sickle cell gene allele is much more common among blacks than among whites; the cystic fibrosis gene allele is much more common among whites than among blacks.
This can be explained by genetics as follows:
healthy carriers of the cystic fibrosis allele are protected from cholera, which historically was a problem in Europe but not in Africa; healthy carriers of the sickle cell allele are protected from malaria, which is a problem in Africa but not in Europe. Whites, with ancestry in Europe, therefore have a lot of cystic fibrosis; blacks, with ancestry in Africa, have a lot of sickle cell anemia.
As soon as malaria is removed from the face of the earth, you can expect that sickle cell anemia will slowly vanish as well (unless there is some other as yet unknown beneficial effect of the sickle cell allele).
You have to distinguish between DD, Dd and dd. If d stands for the recessive Cickle cell trait, then the dd people are sick, the DD and Dd people are healthy. The Dd people are carriers who can pass the trait on to their offspring. The Dd people are different from DD people in various small subtle ways. One of those is that they don't die as often from Malaria.
If Dd and DD were completely indistinguishable, then indeed evolutionary theory would predict that the d gene die out over time.
Such complete indistinguishability however almost never happens. The case where Dd people differ from DD people is called "incomplete dominance".
evolution has to explain how recessive genes were created
Recessive traits which are harmful in a homozygote are almost always beneficial in a heterozygote. See for instance Cystic Fibrosis, the most important genetic disease among whites. It's a recessive trait. Heterozygotic carriers of that trait are protected from Cholera because they don't lose water as fast as others when they get diarrhea. Same for cickle sell anemia, the most important genetic disease among blacks. It's recessive, and heterozygotic carries are protected from malaria, because of the special shape of their red blood cells which the malaria parasite tries to attack.
And now you won't be surprised to learn that malaria is a big problem in the area where blacks originated, and cholera is a big problem in the area where whites originated.
What is the legal basis for these audits? I mean, can I just show up at your house and demand that you prove that your watch is in fact yours and that you didn't steal it from me, nor bought it from someone who stole it from me, nor bought it from someone who bought it from someome who stole it from me...?
I really like Bill's argument "In a GPL world, only the farmers will pay taxes, hacking at night". It conveniently forgets that Microsoft hasn't paid income taxes in years because of stock option loopholes, and that in any case, even if they did pay taxes, the net money flow would still go from the government to Microsoft and not the other way around.